Saturday, September 26, 2015

After the Dominion
Post and Christchurch Press published
my column on Graham Brazier and Hello Sailor, broadcaster Gary McCormick
contacted me. Gary knew the guys from Hello Sailor well and wanted to explain
the band’s appeal. He submitted a letter to both papers but neither published
it, so I’m happy to post it here.

Karl du Fresne, in
his column about the amount of media attention given to the funeral of Hello
Sailor’s Graham Brazier and prior to that, of Dave McArtney two years
ago, raises some very good questions.

Why the media
attention for the deaths of members of a rock band which Dave McArtney himself
said failed at the critical moments?

They did not have
the success that Dragon had
in Australia and their trip to the US was a disaster. So why the outpouring of
grief at both funerals at St Mathew’s Church and the substantial media interest?

Karl refers to the
drug use which was big among New Zealand musicians at the time and asked, “What’s
admirable about alcohol or drug addiction that wrecks people’s lives?”

Good question.

Hello Sailor’ sGutter Black, written by Dave McArtney, was an anthem of
defiance which struck a pose against the background of the rigid, conformist
New Zealand of the Muldoon years.

Blue Lady and I’m a Texan reinforced an
exhilarating sense (to the rest of us living in small town New Zealand) that here
was a band …. that didn’t care
! From their boots to their loud Pacifica shirts, they were the spirit of summer.
They represented danger, Ponsonby-by-Night (at a time when any young
person who had the opportunity would have lived there) and they were loved
by women in the best rock band tradition.

Dragonand a few
other bands had the same mana, but Hello
Sailor seemed to be around more often and were more accessible to party-goers
from Whangarei to Invercargill.

So, to answer Karl
du Fresne’s question: Hello Sailorhad the songs for Kiwi rockers that beautifully represented a time
and a spirit . They personified and wrote about a Ponsonby, Gisborne, New Plymouth, Timaru and Invercargill
Kiwi-style “Summer of Love”!

The second reason
for the public outpouring of grief was the individuals – Graham and Dave
themselves. Both flawed, Karl noted, as are we all.

Graham had the
serious flaws – all born out of anxiety. Impossibly good-looking and in the
early days, afraid to sing at all. He had an enormous talent as a songwriter – Billy Bold and Blue Lady – and a huge stage presence, but was riddled by doubt.

For someone of his
vulnerability and personality type, drugs were the obvious solution (read Amy
Winehouse.)

Graham’s excesses
(and there were some spectacular public ones) were a part of the battle with
himself. His friends completely understood that and helped time after
time to clear up the collateral damage.

He had a lot of
friends because if you had one relaxed funny conversation with Graham, the
memory of it stays with you for a lifetime. He was a lovely, troubled guy.

Dave McArtney was
Graham’s twin, in my opinion. He loved Graham and backed him. They were like
two soldiers on patrol. It was a brand of loyalty and understanding that the
All Blacks can only dream about!

Thus the media
coverage of both “rock funerals” was not out of order. Paul Simon wrote a song
in which he says “every generation
throws a hero up the rock charts.”

Friday, September 25, 2015

(First published in the Nelson Mail and Manawatu Standard, September 23.)

There are royalists and there are monarchists. Some people
might dismiss this as an artificial distinction, but for my purposes it’s a
useful one.

Royalists love the glamour and pageantry associated with the
Queen and her family. They devour every sycophantic magazine article about them
and turn out in their thousands to cheer and wave whenever a royal visits New
Zealand.

At the risk of sounding condescending, the enthusiasm of
royalists is more sentimental than rational. It’s the fairy-tale aspect of
royalty that appeals to them.

Monarchists, on the other hand, may be quite indifferent to
the rituals and trappings of royalty, yet value the monarchy as a constitutional
mechanism. I’m one of the latter.

I’m more likely to walk across Cook Strait than to join the
crowds lining the route of a royal motorcade or buy a souvenir tea towel
marking the birth of the latest Windsor. Nonetheless, I believe the monarchy is
the best possible form of government for New Zealand. Opinion polls suggest
most New Zealanders feel the same.

This is curious when you consider that no one ever voted for
the monarchy. It’s a system we’ve inherited largely by historical accident. But
the point is, it works.

That’s kind of accidental too, but good things as well as
bad can happen by accident.

All Westminster-style democracies have some sort of titular
head over and above the prime minister. Some,
such as India, are republics with an elected president, but New Zealand (like
Canada and Australia) has the Queen as its head of state.

To many people it’s an affront to democracy that the most
powerful figure in our constitution – powerful notionally rather than in reality – is
unelected. Furthermore, they regard inherited power and privilege as
fundamentally wrong and offensive. And it irritates them even more that our head
of state lives 20,000 kilometres away.

I understand all that, but it’s possible to regard inherited
power and privilege as objectionable in principle while also acknowledging that
in strictly pragmatic terms, the monarchy serves us well.

Those who lobby for New Zealand to become a republic
overlook the fact that constitutional monarchy is not a system in which royal
edicts are imperiously handed down, but one where elected governments make
their own decisions.

This is not Saudi Arabia, where the power of the monarchy is
absolute. New Zealand operates as a sovereign, autonomous state – a republic in
all but name. As the distinguished jurist Sir Kenneth Keith succinctly put it,
“the Queen reigns but the government rules”.

Her function is almost entirely ceremonial. Her “reserve
powers”, as they are known, are almost never exercised. Metaphorically
speaking, they are kept in a glass case bearing the words “Break in case of
emergency”.

This might happen in a rare political crisis, as occurred
in Australia when the Governor-General controversially dismissed the Whitlam
government in 1975.

The constitutional correctness of that dismissal is
still fiercely debated, but in a sense it became academic: a general election
was called soon afterwards and Whitlam’s Labour Party was overwhelmingly defeated.
So even in a crisis, power is handed back to the people and normal service
resumes.

Constitutionally it all seems a rather ramshackle
arrangement, functioning as much by convention as by clearly defined rules, but
it works.

One crucial reason it works is that the Queen is above
politics. It’s to our advantage that she’s 20,000 kilometres away and has no
stake in what happens here politically.

Therein lies the big concern about republicanism. Whichever
way a New Zealand president were to be elected or appointed, it seems
impossible to avoid political influence in the process. Neutrality could not be
guaranteed.

Republicans like to characterise support for the monarchy as
a sentimental attachment to an anachronistic institution, but there’s nothing
sentimental about valuing the constitutional role of the Crown. It’s a matter
of simple pragmatism.

If anyone’s guilty of resorting to sentimental arguments,
it’s republicans who invoke fuzzy, feel-good notions of autonomy and nationhood
as justification for having our own president.

We have our nationhood and autonomy already. Or haven’t they
noticed?

There’s one important caveat to all of the above. The Queen,
who recently became Britain’s longest-serving monarch, has performed her duties
impeccably. She is respected as a woman of wisdom, grace and discretion.

But is her son Charles cut from the same cloth? I don’t
think so, and neither, it seems, do the British public. The goodwill that the
Queen has conscientiously fostered could soon dissolve if her pompous, ineffectual
and occasionally petulant son assumed the throne.

That could place the monarchy at risk. While the republic
vs. monarchy debate is essentially about rival systems, there’s no point trying
to deny that personalities also come into it.

Perhaps by the time the Queen steps down, the time for Charles
to take over will have passed and the crown will pass to his more likeable son,
William. In fact you can’t help wondering whether that’s her intention.

Saturday, September 19, 2015

They farewelled Graham Brazier at St Matthew’s Church in
Auckland last week.

Affectionate tributes were paid. Clearly, the former singer
from the Auckland band Hello Sailor was loved and admired.

Karyn Hay of Radio
with Pictures fame led the proceedings. Journalists noted the presence of
Dave Dobbyn, Jordan Luck, Hammond Gamble, Susan Wood and former Auckland mayor
Les Mills, who used to be Brazier’s father-in-law.

The full church was evidence that Brazier was important to a
lot of people. Not all of us will be similarly honoured when we die.

But I do wonder about the media attention devoted to his
death. 3 News devoted one and a half
minutes to the funeral service, an honour not granted to many.

Effusive obituaries and newspaper columns were written.
Some of those who paid tribute to Brazier seemed eager to show they had a personal
connection with him, as if hoping that some of the glory attached to being an
Auckland rock hero of the 1970s might rub off on them.

The fact that Brazier had convictions for assaulting two of his
partners was barely mentioned. It was inconveniently at odds with the eulogies
that described him as a gentle, polite and literate man.

This is not meant as an attack on Brazier, whom I never met.
We are all imperfect human beings. Rather, I’m curious about who the media
choose to honour, and why.

The established view among the New Zealand rock music priesthood
is that Hello Sailor occupy a uniquely hallowed place in Kiwi pop culture. But
do they?

They were world-famous in Auckland – or to be more specific,
Ponsonby. They captured the spirit of a particular Auckland scene at a
particular time.

I believe both their popularity and significance have been
overstated. Gutter Black, their
signature song, went no higher than 15 on the New Zealand pop chart – not bad,
but it hardly qualifies for the anthem status bestowed on it. Blue Lady did only marginally better.

Admittedly, chart success isn’t the only determinant of a
song’s greatness, but popular taste surely must count for something.

I suspect Hello Sailor were liked for a lot of reasons that
didn’t necessarily have much to do with music. They personified a new urban
cool that was fashionable in Auckland at the time. They had a raffish,
subversive quality that made them attractive to a particular demographic.

They struck a pose that was particularly appealing because
it was so markedly at variance with the politics of the conservative and autocratic
Robert Muldoon, who was then at the height of his power.

But how good were they? They went to America and failed.
I’ve heard it suggested that the reason they never cracked the LA scene was
that they were too busy partying and doing drugs.

I don’t buy that. Plenty of rock bands have led notoriously
debauched and drug-saturated lives while continuing to record hit songs. I
think the truth is that Hello Sailor weren’t as good as their fans thought they
were.

The members of another New Zealand band of that time,
Dragon, led even wilder lives than Hello Sailor, but still managed to have a
string of hits in Australia, including a No 1, and once cracked the Billboard
Hot 100 in the US.

But Hello Sailor were lionised by writers, journalists, DJs
and the culture commissars in a way that Dragon never were. It was a very
cliquey Auckland phenomenon, and remains so.

One factor that enhanced the Hello Sailor legend was that drug
use was big among New Zealand musicians at that time and the band was at the
heart of that culture. Blue Lady was
a drug song.

Some music journalists are strangely enthralled by dissolute
rock singers and write about their flawed lives as if they are worthy of
emulation. But what’s admirable about alcohol or drug addiction that wrecks people’s
lives?

Only two weeks ago I saw a documentary about Amy Winehouse,
in which a uniquely talented woman disintegrated in front of our eyes. Not an
edifying spectacle.

Now Brazier is dead at 63. His close friend and bandmate
Dave McArtney died two years ago at 62.

Both had been heroin users. In the eyes of some of their
admirers, this enhanced their mystique. But you can’t help wondering whether
both might still be alive if they hadn’t conformed to the archetype of the
hard-living, junkie rock star that some journalists seem so keen to glamorise.

Thursday, September 10, 2015

(First published in the Nelson Mail and Manawatu Standard, September 9.)

A letter in last week’s Listener
magazine offered an interesting slant on the workplace safety debate.

The writer was a New Zealand geologist who had worked in
Australia. He had gone there convinced, as most of us probably are, of the
virtues of our no-fault accident compensation system.

He thought ACC was clearly superior to the Australian
alternative, where people injured in workplace mishaps (or in car accidents, or
even as the result of a fall on a slippery supermarket floor) can sue for
damages.

That used to be the way in New Zealand too. Personal injury
cases were a profitable area of practice for lawyers until the well dried up
with the introduction of the accident compensation scheme in 1974.

Under ACC, the state picked up the tab for all work and
non-work injuries, regardless of who (if anyone) was to blame.

At first it seemed a bizarre notion that a burglar who accidentally
slashed his arm while breaking into a house should be entitled, courtesy of his
law-abiding fellow-citizens, to free medical treatment and weekly earnings while
he recovered to steal again.

But we put those misgivings aside because the new regime
seemed preferable to one where compensation hinged on being able to prove
negligence, which involved hiring a lawyer.

In hindsight, ACC can be seen as the high-water mark of
socialism – or, if you like, collectivism – in New Zealand.

Effectively, it was a state takeover of turf previously occupied by lawyers and insurance companies. But more than that, it took fault out of
the equation.

It made us all collectively responsible for everyone else’s
folly, whether it’s a company with lax safety standards or a snowboarder
testing his skills on a slope strewn with rocks.

To put it another way, it absolved people of full personal responsibility
for the consequences of their actions. It meant that if we fell over, the state
could be counted on to pick us up and kiss us better.

This brings us back to the New Zealand geologist in
Australia. He noticed that Australian employers were extremely risk-averse when
it came to health and safety – more so, by implication, than bosses here.

As a supervisor, he was required to ensure not only that
workers wore all the usual safety equipment, but long-sleeved shirts and long
trousers as well, for fear that the boss might be held liable if someone got
skin cancer.

Contrast that with a recent New Zealand court case in which
a forestry worker wasn’t even wearing a high-vis vest when trees were being
felled in the pre-dawn darkness. A workmate didn’t see him, and he was killed
by a falling log.

The geologist wrote that he had been incredulous on reading
about the infamously slack safety standards at the Pike River coal mine. “Our
no-fault ACC system,” he concluded, “seems to mean just that.”

In other words, if I interpreted his letter correctly,
no-fault compensation can serve as a licence for employers to disregard their
obligations when it comes to workers’ safety.

Did anyone anticipate this at the time ACC was introduced? I
don’t know. But it wouldn’t be the first time well-intentioned legislation has led
to unintended and sometimes disastrous consequences. History is littered with examples.

The domestic purposes benefit was brought in to help
struggling solo parents – an entirely laudable aim. It seems no one imagined
that it would incentivise teenagers to have children at the taxpayers’ expense.

The Privacy Act was passed to protect personal information.
Now it’s used to justify schools arranging abortions for girls without having to
tell their parents.

Bike helmets were made compulsory to prevent cyclists
suffering brain injury. Result? Women and teenagers stopped riding bikes
because helmets were considered uncool or just too inconvenient.

In the United States, idealistic zealots successfully
campaigned in the early 20th century for Prohibition – an event that
gave birth to organised crime as gangsters exploited demand for illicit liquor.
It was the best thing that ever happened to the Mafia.

The European Union arose out of a desire to ensure that the
countries of Europe would never again go to war with each other, but its
architects overlooked underlying economic, political and cultural differences
that are now threatening to pull the union apart.

Likewise, when the 1985 Schengen Treaty created
passport-free travel between 26 European countries, no one anticipated that
Europe would be swamped with refugees from North Africa and the Middle East.

Often these changes are championed by idealists from the
political left. Their intentions may be good but their faith in the ability of
laws to control human behaviour is often misplaced.

Of course we can’t use fear of unforeseen consequences as an
excuse for doing nothing. But if the geologist’s perception is correct, it’s
possible that the accident compensation scheme perversely contributed to the
culture of workplace complacency highlighted in 2013 by the government’s
Independent Taskforce on Workplace Health and Safety.

Monday, September 7, 2015

Mention abortion and a lot of
people metaphorically block their ears and start humming loudly.

At the very sight of the word
in this column, some readers will probably turn the page and move on. But this
is an issue that refuses to go away.

It was re-ignited last week
when Hillary Kieft of Stratford courageously spoke before a parliamentary select
committee.

Kieft’s daughter, at the age
of 15, was referred for an abortion without her parents’ knowledge. She later
tried to kill herself.

The abortion was arranged by
the daughter’s school. According to her mother, she was given no other option.

That a vulnerable teenager
could be referred for a potentially life-changing and psychologically damaging
operation without parental knowledge seems despicable. It deprived her of
family support when she most needed it.

The defence for keeping
parents in the dark in such situations is that they can’t always be relied on
to support pregnant daughters. Some girls would risk being harshly punished for
bringing disgrace on their family, which is despicable in its own way.

This provides politicians
with a ready-made excuse not to accede to Kieft’s petition for a law change
that would require parents to be notified before girls under the age of 16
could be referred for an abortion.

It seems an extraordinarily
modest request, given that parents are normally assumed to have some control
over what happens to their children. But don’t expect Parliament to act.

Most politicians run a mile from
the abortion debate. Too difficult; too likely to stir up raw emotions.

I expect that the select
committee will gratefully seize any reason for not meddling with the status
quo. The possibility that not all parents might be as loving as Hillary and Peter
Kieft will provide them with all the justification they need.

But that would leave a grave
wrong unremedied. It’s not hard to understand why the Kiefts and others in
their situation feel their rights as parents have been coldly disregarded.

What made matters worse in their
case was that it wasn’t just a passive deception. It appears they were wilfully
misled.

Kieft said that when their
daughter was dropped off after the abortion, she and her husband were told she
had been to a counselling appointment. If that’s true, they were told a
bare-faced lie.

So this is what it has come
to: an agency of the state not only usurping parents’ rights, but trying to
cover it up by lying.

We should expect no more,
because the administration of the abortion law is drenched top to bottom with
dishonesty.

The dishonesty starts with
the pretence that abortions are carried out for the mental health of the
mother. It was officially acknowledged as long ago as 1998 that this is a “pseudo-legal”
justification to get around the fact that otherwise, abortion remains an
offence under the Crimes Act.

If dishonesty can be
practised on such a scale that it’s used to justify 14,000 abortions every
year, it’s easy to see why lying to a schoolgirl’s parents would be considered
no big deal.

The school can always say it
only did what everyone else associated with the carrying out of abortions does.
You might call it top-down dishonesty.

In this case the deceit was
compounded because even when a psychology team was called in to help with their
daughter’s deteriorating mental state, the Kiefts were not told what had
triggered the change in her behaviour.

In other words there was a
conspiracy of silence which involved health professionals too. And in the
meantime the Kiefts were afraid to go to sleep at night for fear that their
daughter might not be alive when they woke up.

Kieft told the select
committee there was no follow-up counselling or medical care for their daughter.
Once the job was done, neither her school nor the Family Planning clinic where
the abortion was carried out showed any further interest.

So much for all the hypocritical
cant about abortionists being primarily concerned for women’s wellbeing.

The acute irony is that a University
of Otago study found in 2008 that women who had had abortions had a 30 per cent
greater risk of developing mental health problems.

No one talks about this.
That’s more dishonesty, right there.

So while abortions are
ostensibly about protecting women’s mental health, they often have precisely
the reverse effect. And so it turned out in the sad case of Kieft’s daughter,
who still takes medication every day to deal with depression. Footnote: A letter in the Dominion Post of September 7, written by Family Planning chief executive Jackie Edmond, says the abortion in question could not have been carried out by a Family Planning clinic because only its Tauranga clinic is licensed to carry out abortions. I accept that that's technically correct. My column was based on information in a Dominion Post story that said the girl was taken to a Family Planning clinic. But the distinction is an academic one. The abortion was arranged by Family Planning, and I find it interesting that the organisation now gives the impression of wanting to distance itself from the case.

Sunday, September 6, 2015

Yesterday I wrote a blog post about Hello Sailor and the death of Graham Brazier. I have decided to delete it - not because I resile from anything I said, or because of any criticism (although it did attract one critical comment), but simply because I decided, on reflection, that the timing was insensitive.

Friday, September 4, 2015

Pakuranga MP Maurice Williamson became the darling of the so-called
liberals (I say “so-called” because people who like to think of themselves as
liberal are often anything but) when he made a speech in Parliament ridiculing
opponents of the same-sex marriage bill.

I wonder what those people think of their hero now, in the light
of his puerile, oafish and sexist antics as MC at an information technology dinner
– a performance that so embarrassed the host company that it emailed an apology
to its guests.

The supposed champion of gay rights revealed himself as a
childish sniggerer, happy to play for laughs at the expense of homosexuals. I
wonder, will he be feted internationally for that, as he was for his “gay
rainbow” speech? Somehow I doubt it.

His gig as MC confirmed – not that confirmation was needed –
that Williamson is a buffoon and a compulsive showboater with the emotional
intelligence of a fourth-form schoolboy. I wonder how long it will be before either
the National Party or the voters of Pakuranga decide they’ve had enough and pull
the pin.

About Me

I am a freelance journalist and columnist living in the Wairarapa region of New Zealand. In the presence of Greenies I like to boast that I walk to work each day - I've paced it out and it's about 15 metres. I write about all sorts of stuff: politics, the media, music, wine, films, cycling and anything else that piques my interest - even sport, though I admit I don't have the intuitive understanding of sport that most New Zealand males absorb as if by osmosis. I'm a former musician (bass and guitar) with a lifelong love of music that led me to write my book 'A Road Tour of American Song Titles: From Mendocino to Memphis', published by Bateman NZ in July 2016. I've been in journalism for more than 40 years and like many journalists I know a little bit about a lot of things and probably not enough about anything. I have never won any journalism awards.